Mayor Adams finds $20 million for bike boulevards

View full sizeCity of PortlandA curb extension to catch and treat storm water doubles as a bike boulevard at Southeast Spokane Street at 13th Avenue.When Mayor Sam Adams said he wanted to use $20 million in sewer money to help kickstart the city’s bicycle master plan, a lot of people scoffed, what do sewers have to do with bikes?

Well, Adams has come up with a connection. Dovetail the city’s “green streets” initiative with the bike plan’s call for bicycle boulevards.

It turns out that both involve placing something in the street. The green streets program builds out green patches along streets to help manage stormwater runoff. And bicycle boulevards are made by building curb extensions to slow traffic to make neighborhood streets safer for bikes.

“If we’re doing traffic calming with curb extensions, why not use the opportunity to treat stormwater?” said Catherine Ciarlo, the mayor’s transportation adviser

Adams will bring an ordinance to council next Wednesday calling for the Bureau of Environmental Services to spend $20 million on stormwater projects that double as bike boulevards, Ciarlo said.

The green streets money will not be used for striping or other bike boulevard features, she said.

The move comes after another of the mayor’s ideas – using unspent money from the massive Big Pipe project – met resistance from the environmental services bureau and Commissioner Dan Saltzman, who oversees the bureau.

Last week, Dean Marriott, BES director, said he was interested in the green streets idea.

Ciarlo said Adams has been a strong supporter of the green streets program from his time as commissioner in charge of the bureau.

“The more rain water that can be treated at the street, the less runs into the river,” she said.

The goal of the $600 million 2030 Portland Bicycle Plan is that 25 percent of trips in the city be by bike in 20 years. At the heart of the proposal is nearly 700 miles of new bikeways that would make up a "safer and more comfortable" two-wheeled urban network for new cyclists.

The plan identifies bike boulevards as good places to start.

BES and the transportation department are working together to create a list of streets where the dual treatment would be feasible, Ciarlo said. A list of projects might be available by Wednesday’s meeting.

Update: Marriott wants to make it clear that there is no "unspent" money in the Big Pipe project, and if there was it would be spent on other needed sewer system projects. Marriott also said that Adams' plan will have a financial impact in BES. "Priorities will be shifted," to put $20 million into the green streets program, he said,.

Update; A BES analysis of the impacts of providing $20 million for the bike master plan lists $7.4 million worth of programs that have some relationship to the "green streets" program, such as watershed investment funds and federal 'innovative wet weather" grants.But $12.4 million would come from delaying capital projects aimed at reducing basement flooding and fixing leaky pipes before they fail